te in 1867 the charge was repeated, and many years afterwards
was revived in an offensive form. Finally, Miller entered suit for
libel against the Halifax _Chronicle_, and in the witness-box Sir
Charles Tupper bore testimony to the propriety of Miller's conduct in
1866. Notwithstanding the hostility between Howe and Tupper, they
afterwards resumed friendly relations and sat comfortably together in
the Dominion Cabinet. In politics hard words can be soon forgotten.
The doughty Tupper had won his province for the union and could afford
to forget.

[Illustration: Sir Charles Tupper, Bart. From a photograph by Elliott
and Fry, London.]

{117}

The tactics pursued in Canada during these exciting months in the
Maritime Provinces were those defined by a great historian, in dealing
with a different convulsion, as 'masterly inactivity.' In that
memorable speech of years afterwards when Macdonald, about to be
overwhelmed by the Pacific Railway charges, appealed to his countrymen
in words that came straight from the heart, he declared: 'I have fought
the battle of union.' The events of 1866 are the key to this
utterance. Parliament was not summoned until June; and meanwhile
ministers said nothing. That this line of policy was deliberate, is
set forth in a private letter from Macdonald to Tilley:

Had we met early in the year and before your elections, the greatest
embarrassment and your probable defeat at the polls would have ensued.
We should have been pressed by the Opposition to declare whether we
adhered to the Quebec resolutions or not. Had we answered in the
affirmative, you would have been defeated, as you were never in a
position to go to the polls on those resolutions. Had we replied in
the negative, and stated that it was an {118} open question and that
the resolutions were liable to alteration, Lower Canada would have
arisen as one man, and good-bye to federation.

Thus was the situation saved; and, although the delegates from the
Maritime Provinces were obliged to wait in London for some months for
their Canadian colleagues, owing to the Fenian invasion of Canada and
to a change of ministry in England, the body of delegates assembled in
December at the Westminster Palace Hotel, in London, and sat down to
frame the details of the bill for the union of British North America.

[1] Gordon's dispatches to the colonial secretary indicate that from
the first he distrusted the Quebec scheme and that th